Monday, November 19, 2012

Today is the start of a new transfer, and I've once again made it through unscathed. I'll be staying in Yamato again this transfer, along with Elder Nakamura. That means I'll be here for Thanksgiving and Christmas. I'm excited.

So it's actually been a rather interesting week this last week. To start off, on Monday we went to a train station out on the edge of our area that we've never been to before. As we were out and about, we heard some music playing that sounded really interesting. It was definitely live, but we couldn't figure out exactly what they were playing. We decided to investigate. As we got closer to the sound, we realized it was coming from off the playground of a preschool. Well that was odd. What reallly caught us by suprise was that not only was it coming from the preschool, it was being played by preschoolers. A preschool marching band. And they were really playing, it wasn't some recording. Wow. I definitely wasn't expecting that. I wasn't sure if I should be impressed or depressed. Whatever I was though, it was pretty big.

Since it was the last week of the transfer, we went to the temple again on Tuesday. After the temple, we went to eat lunch with a few other missionaries. We decided to go get shabu shabu at a fairly well known place (among missionaries) over in shibuya. If Shibuya rings a bell for you, or even if it doesn't, Shibuya is home to the world's largest crosswalk. I'm not sure how accurate this is, but I heard that Shibuya is considered the most urban place in the world. I'd believe it. The buildings aren't as tall as you would expect, like in Manhattan or someplace, but there were literally people EVERYWHERE. It was ridiculous. That was really fun.

Later in the week we found a young man by the name of Scott. He called out to us as we rode past on our bikes, so we stopped to talk with him. He's 19, and he's American, but he's never been to America. How is that possible, you ask? Allow me to explain. His dad is navy, and Scott was born in Spain while his dad was stationed there. They went straight from Spain to Japan, and a short time after that his parents divorced. His dad went back to the states, but he and his mom stayed in Japan, where he's been ever since. Yeah. Strange, but true. Anyway, Scott's a pretty cool kid. We're planning on meeting with him again soon, and hopefully that will go somewhere. It was actually really funny when we traded numbers, he told us that he wasn't very smart but if we ever needed any help with anything like moving heavy stuff or something to give him a call. In my head I was just like "Hey, that's our line!" Haha! He's a really nice kid.

Oh, this one's pretty fun. So I don't know if you remember anything about Eduardo, the Brazilian we found a few weeks back, but he's the one who's lived in Japan for 20 years, married a Japanese woman, and he's pretty much fluent in Japanese and English, and he's wicca. So he's a really nice guy though, and we've been trying to meet with him for a while. We actually had an appointment set up, but when we went to visit him, nobody was home. We came to find out that he had thought we would drop by his work, and we misunderstood him and went to his house. So, after we got that straightened out, we set up another appointment. He asked us to come by on Friday when he had some free time, so that's what we did. Well, it wasn't until we showed up at his work that I remembered that he told us he was a tattoo artist. Yeah. So we had a lesson with him inside his tattoo shop. Hopefully next time we can have a lesson somewhere a little more conducive to the spirit...

So, this might be kinda random, but I saw an ad in a train that I though was pretty funny. It's just a picture of a guy wearing a really nice suit, staring off into the distance with this look of deep thought on his face, while he's holding a can of beer. The only other thing on the ad is a caption which says 「ビール好きなあの人に」, which means "To that guy who likes beer..." I'm not sure why I thought it was so funny, but maybe you'll get a laugh out of it too.

Anyways, those are some of the more interesting bits of the week. Other than that, things are going well. Ishihara has her baptismal interview on wednesday, so if everything goes the way we expect she'll be baptized on Sunday. This next week looks like it's going to be pretty busy. Yamato is really taking off right now. I'm glad I get to stay for one more transfer and be a part of it. I'll be sure to let you know all about it! More later!